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Chapter 11
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Henna Artist, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Choice, Independence and Women’s Freedoms
Family and Responsibility
Societal Hierarchy vs. Unordered Intimacy
Care and Communication
Creativity vs. Possession
Summary
Analysis
Radha has ruined her fancy English dress, so she stands in simple clothes as she tells Kanta and Lakshmi what happened. She had started walking past the polo grounds, where her soon-to-be lover played. Eventually, he had asked her to help him practice his Shakespeare. Soon, he was confessing his love to her (“it was just like the movies”). He also told Radha that Lakshmi wanted to prevent their union because she was single and “jealous.” Lakshmi realizes what Radha is saying: that the father of her baby is Ravi.
Symbolically, Radha’s return to her regular, more traditionally Indian garb suggests the collapse of her Western fantasies. Radha’s romanticization of her own life stands in cruel contrast to her view of her sister as a spinster, instead of as a survivor of prolonged abuse. On the level of plot, it is crucial to remember Parvati’s early warning: if she ever saw Ravi and Radha again, she would do her best to damage Lakshmi’s reputation. Now, the worst-case scenario has come to fruition.
Themes
Lakshmi passes out. When she comes to, Kanta is holding a cold cloth to her head, and Radha implores Kanta to convince Lakshmi that she can keep the baby. Though Radha has not yet told Ravi, she is confident that he will be excited. As Radha says, plenty of 13-year-old girls in Ajar have kids. And besides, she wants a family, something she feels she has never had.
Radha’s assertion that adolescent motherhood is common reflects the pervasiveness of Lakshmi’s mother’s “unripe fruit” outlook. More vitally, Radha’s feeling that she has never had a family reflects her isolation both in Ajar and in her sister’s house, especially because Lakshmi struggles so much to communicate her sisterly love.
Themes
Lakshmi tries to get Radha to understand how difficult it would be to explain the situation to Parvati, but Radha naively ignores this issue. Sadly, Lakshmi realizes that though she wants to teach her sister about love, she herself has never really experienced it. Radha lashes out, explaining how isolated Lakshmi has made her feel: first by forbidding her from the palace, and then by putting her in a school where all the girls made fun of her due to her relative lack of wealth.
Just as Lakshmi is trapped between her past in Ajar and her future in her fancy Rajnagar house, Radha feels trapped between her sister’s expectations (that she will fit in with high Jaipur society) and the lack of guidance Lakshmi actually provides. Lakshmi’s inability to imagine a better life for her sister than the one she herself had makes her force Radha down the same painful path—just as their mother enacted her own trauma onto her daughters.
Themes
Looking at Radha with her bobbed haircut and her knowledge of tea parties and Western dances, Lakshmi realizes how little guidance she can offer her younger sister. But when Radha talks about how Rochester loved Jane Eyre, Lakshmi informs her that “Parvati Singh will not allow a love marriage.” Radha claims that her older sister has never cared about her feelings, so Lakshmi asks Kanta to tell her sister the truth—that Ravi is engaged to Sheela Sharma.
The Sharma-Singh marriage pits Lakshmi’s two key desires—taking care of her sister and building a prosperous life for herself—against each other. In gaining access to the palace and more money, Lakshmi inadvertently mortgages her sister’s happiness (even if Ravi would never have been allowed to marry someone beneath his station). The reference to Rochester and Jane Eyre refers to the star-crossed but ultimately successful romance at the center of Charlotte Brontë’s novel.
Themes
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Deeply hurt, Radha tears into Lakshmi, telling her that Kanta and Manu are more family than she could ever be. Despite Kanta’s protests, Lakshmi must also tell her sister that she is the one who arranged the Sharma-Singh union. Radha hopes that things will change in the intervening years, but both Kanta and Lakshmi know that Ravi’s marriage to Sheela is set in stone.
Though Radha’s anger at Lakshmi is painful, her willingness to accept Kanta and Manu as family also provides an important lesson: that family can be chosen for comfort and companionship instead of just inherited genetically, a biological burden to work around.
Themes
Radha nevertheless vows to keep her baby: “I will not do anything to harm this baby,” she scolds Lakshmi, “you may do that to other women, but you won’t do it to me!” Kanta has trouble processing this revelation—she is just learning that Lakshmi helps women get abortions. But when Kanta thinks back to her own collegiate years, she is able to assure Radha that an abortion is the right choice.
Though Radha sees Lakshmi’s abortive support as an act of harm (something Lakshmi “does” to other women), Lakshmi—and Kanta—are able to understand that access to abortion allows women to choose whether or not their lives will forever change based on momentary sexual desires. In particular, both the literary Kanta and the painterly Lakshmi know that access to contraception allows them to have artistic or intellectual pursuits instead of purely domestic ones.
Themes
Kanta also advises Radha not to judge her older sister so harshly, explaining that the two are “a lot alike.” Unlike Lakshmi, Kanta has never had to work to support herself, and she sees how much the need for money and comfort has weighed on Lakshmi. As Radha weeps, Kanta offers her home to Radha temporarily. Lakshmi leaves, desperate to clear her head.
Kanta is the first person to state outright what the novel has slowly been suggesting: that Lakshmi and Radha, despite their different experiences and needs, share their stubbornness, their intelligence, and their conflicting desires. In this sophisticated explanation of how class functions in daily life, Kanta also makes clear to Radha that every aspect of her relationship with her sister is modified by how much Lakshmi needs to do simply to keep them both safe and fed and housed.
Themes
